Barfights mean punching more townspeople in the face!

But when do we get to kill some slavers?

The party meets back up with Adari and deadzorz!Lucien after clearing out the cult. He has found a crude drawing of himself stuck to a tree with a +2 dagger. Score! Chris takes the dagger. Also, probably moire importantly, it appears someone is after our shadowelf buddy. The party burns the evil book they picked up in the last adventure and decides to head to the nearby town of Luln (hereby known as Lulz, as in “we did it for the”) to raise Lucien.

Streetwise reveals that there’s some funky stuff going on Belev, a town up north, and that those Iron Ring dudes are in town. The party stashes Lucien’s body at an inn with Talia guarding and discusses their options over drinks. Suddenly, Adari runs out the back claiming there are some dudes coming for him. Some guard looking humans come into the tavern, obviously looking for Adari, and the party covers for him by starting and awesome bar brawl. Dyne totally flips a table in front of the back exit and everyone punches townspeople. This is getting to be an (awesome) habit for the party. Streetwising for info on the guard dudes reveals nothing. We take note that they were wearing a red and yellow hourglass insignia for future streetwising attempts.

The party decides the best course of action is to take Lucien near to Belev, raise him, then tell him we’ve rescued him and we need to pop into Belev for something before returning him to the king. Hopefully, there’s some terrible shit going down in the town related to slaving so we can complete our mission. On the way out, we meet up with those slavers we hung out with before Arshintsevo. They too are going to Belev to check out the goings-on. For some unknown reason, we decide to travel with them instead of killing them. When they inquire about the body bag, we tell them it’s Dagmar and we’re taking him to Belev for a cheap resurrection ritual. They are either dense or I rolled really well and buy this story. The really question is, what will we tell them next week when Dagmar/Brad returns from his dates totally alive.

On the way to Belev, the party and evil friends are waylaid by what appears to be a nightwalker, a nasty undead monster, who demands all our money and magic items. The slavers run off like pansies. The nightwalker turns out to be an oni with ogre buddies, and we make short work of them. Then, when the party tries to get some rest, we are randomly attacked by some halflings. We find out (after killing some of them) that they mistook us for slavers. Um… oops? Scott insists that if the party had tried to figure out why halflings were attacking us before killing them this might have gone differently. I disagree. This is how I imagine it would have gone down:

Less-agressive party member: Hey guys, what’s up with these halflings? Should we try to talk to them before the killins?

Agressive party member: Dude, what kind of nonsense is that? Hey, critical!

Less-agressive party member: shrugs Whatevs. Is it my turn yet?

You know I’m right. Also, it’s totally the halflings’ fault for attacking an obviously powerful group of adventurers without some sort of telling cry like “die slavers!” or the like.

The next morning, the party manages to bluff their way into Belev using the slaver cred killing halflings and having slaver buddies gives us. Man, no wonder those halflings hate us. We’d better get to kill these guys soon.

There seems to be some sort of construction project going on in Belev for which much labor (consensual or otherwise) is needed. We find a (somewhat) abandoned warehouse in which to res Lucien and after killing it’s spider/gargoyle occupants finally de-corpsify him. He is understandably confused, but we manage to convince him that the best thing for his safety would be for us to take care of the shit going on in Belev before returning him to the comforts of home. I think I either rolled like a 19 on this bluff check or Lucien is lacking in mental acuity. I’m voting for at least a little bit of the latter, since he still doesn’t believe that the Black Eagle Barony is a place of major suckitude, even after being carted around by slavers and being sacrificed by an evil cult. Thick as two planks, that one. He won’t let me disguise him as a girl (spoilsport), so we give him a crazy mustache and cover him in dirt before heading off the the supersecret! building project.

Streetwising reveals that there is a secret side entrace to the project, which is underground, and that one of the halfling raiders got dragged down there earlier. We manage to distract the side entrance guards by having street urchins throw rocks at them and get inside.

After going down some tunnels, the party eventually comes across a room with some weird system of portals controlled by magic circles in the floor. Oh, and some gnolls.

After defeating the gnolls and making their way through the portal puzzle the party comes to a room with some stairs down and an entrance to another room. We decide to clear out the current level first and enter into the next room to find it holds a gnoll-tastic surprise and some weird aqueducts on the floor that push you along randomly if you end your turn on them. During the course of this battle, some other gnolls come up the stairs to join in the fun and also decide to shackle Chris/Flor. He gets to keep them for what we can only assume is the purpose of sexy fun-time. Lucien hides out in the previous room during the fight, probably wetting his pants like the giant pansy he is.

In the room down the stairs we find a halfling in a prison cell who tells us her name is Deleune Darkeyes. She was captured by Bargle(for serious, that’s his real name), the Baron’s wizard. Apparently he has some really powerful voodoo juice or whatever going on. The party takes no heed of the warning at this time.

The party and Deleune/Lucien go back up the stairs and continue past the aqueduct room and through a room with two portcullises. Apparently you have to pump these things back and forth a bunch of times to get the portcullises to swap which is open/closed. Brad calls them dungeon udders and implies we have to milk them.

After the portcullis room the party continues on down roughening hallways. We eventually come across a hole in the floor which shows some sort of evil summoning ritual being performed in abyssal by Baron and Bargle. Adding to his dumbass tally, Lucien is totally surprised by this. I would like to reiterate my fears for the future of the Karameikan royal line if this is the kind of stupidity they produce. Although, he does use the exclamation “beard of a whore!” when he sees the shit going down, so there’s hope for him yet.

Lucien identifies the Baron’s sword as the “sword of Halav,” some Karameikan immortal. The Baron summons some giant gnoll with lots of heads and offers to sacrifice a bunch of slaves and guards he has hanging around with him. Gnoll-monster accepts, panic ensues below. Then, in an act that really makes it hard to resist pushing him down the hole into the gaping maw of gnoll-monster, Lucien accidentally kicks a rock into the pit and alerts Bargleand Baron to our presence. Really, Lucien? Really? Do you even have an ounce of self preservation in your inbred body? Let’s see the run-down again:

Captured by slavers

Sold to evil cult and sacrificed by death on spikes

Alerts Baron and Bargle and their nasty cadre of gnoll-monster and minions to our presence
Dude is either the unluckiest person ever or legendarily dim-witted. Either way, we should jettison him ASAP.

Getting rid of Lucien will have to wait until after we escape the dungeon, though. The party holes up in the portcullis room to hold out until those with high enough athletics checks to milk the dungeon udders can get the gate flipped so we can escape. In the ensuing fight Bargle earns himself the rank of Doucheprince of the Douchetrons by dispelling my zone of monster-pain and dominating/charming several party members (mostly Derek). The rank is solidified when he turns invisible and disappears, preventing us from killing him. Brad declares that he is “more than we Bargled for.” We’ll get you next time, Bargle!

Notable things that also happened:

Deleune called Justin “pretty boy,” which is especially awesome given his batquito eaten face

Now that Baron and Bargle will be looking for Lucien, Scott is going to let me re-roll to persuade him to dress like a girl. Perhaps Heather can intimidate him? Chris can give +2 by intimating that he finds non-girl Lucien attractive ^_-

Also, I should probably wait to name these adventures until after we have finished them.